


This Ain't Film School (This is Genocide)

by flibbertygigget



Category: Merrily We Roll Along - Sondheim/Furth, Rent - Larson
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Allusions to Henry V, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Angst and Tragedy, Execution, Genocide, M/M, No Smut, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:41:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25939858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: A love story by way of a spy story by way of a space opera.
Relationships: Mark Cohen/Charley Kringas
Comments: 10
Kudos: 7





	This Ain't Film School (This is Genocide)

**Author's Note:**

> A Note About Spans: Spans are the Federacy standard measurement of time. They were invented for use by their military and based on the day/night cycle of Earth rather than the individual planets of the Federacy. While the expressions day and night are still in use, they are used more to express the idea of sunlight and darkness rather than any meaningful measure of time.
> 
> 1 span = ~12 hours, bispan = day, on-span/off-span = on-shift/off-shift, decaspan = 10 spans = 5 days (cultural equivalent of a week), hectospan = 100 spans = 50 days (cultural equivalent of a year)
> 
> Written for @bwaycord's Scarfshipping event

The nights were long on Boheme Station.

It was an accident of placement, a stupid one at that, but the Federacy had already sunk too much time and money into construction to up and leave. So Boheme remained, shadowed nine spans out of ten by the three behemoths that had hoped to use it as a shuttle station, ignored by the Federacy's navy and unstaffed except for some fuelers that serviced the salvage trawlers and spacers who would occasionally come through.

All those facts, of course, made it a perfect place for the Few to meet.

Charley Kringus was not the sort of man to attract attention on Boheme Station. Just another cast-off making his way, serving drinks to the crews of the vessels that docked there, occasionally participating in the black market trade. No one uninitiated would have suspected that he was also the infamous TAL, head of the propaganda arm of the Few. And yet he was, and more besides, he was the man in contact with half of the Few's most highly valued spies.

That was why, when a short young man in the uniform of a naval journalist ordered a martini (shaken, not stirred), Charley invited him back to his room after his shift. Better to be known as the station slut than a member of the Few. Not even the hardest spacer would protect him if  _ that _ got out.

"Well?" Charley said when they had gotten to the relative safety of his studio. "What do you have?"

"How do I know I can trust you?" said the young man.

"You ordered the martini. I assumed you were here on behalf of the Few."

"I don't even know the Few! I never wanted to get into any - any of this. I just want to do the right thing."

"For the honor of the Federacy?"

"For my conscience," the young man shot back. "Roger - that's my bunkmate - he said there was someone on Boheme who could make it known. Who could tell the whole quadrant what was happening."

"You want me for my skills as a propagandist then. Well, you've come to the right guy."

"So you'll help me?"

"What do you have for me?" The young man handed over a few datasticks.

"They said the footage was unusable. They won't - it isn't even half of it. They won't be able to trace it back to me."

"I'll be the judge of that," Charley said. Really, he doubted that there was anything he could use for his work. Anything that smacked of an actual leak would bring the hammer down within the Federacy, and their spies were too valuable to risk for something as silly as a young man’s conscience. 

“Look,” the young man said, still fidgeting, “I just need to make sure-”

“Why are you still here?” Charley said.

“Huh?”

“You passed on your intel. Your job’s done.”

“I just need to make sure you won’t turn me in.”

“I’m no sell out,” Charley said. If there was no other fact he knew in this universe, he knew that at least. He knew his own mind, his own heart, his own morals. He knew what was right, and he knew  _ he _ was right.

“Right,” the young man said, nodding vigorously. “Right. And Roger?”

“I won’t sell him out either,” Charley said with a sigh. “Now get lost, kid. The last thing you need is some Federacy goon noticing where you’ve gone.” The young man scampered, and Charley went to his digipad to look at the datasticks. He didn’t find it strange at all that he didn’t even know the boy’s name.

* * *

Mary was drinking too much again.

Charley had never seen her sober, not since before everything had fallen apart. If she was anyone else, he would have told the Few to shut her out, but Mary had proven herself time and time again. She wouldn’t sell them out, no matter how much her heart still belonged to a turncoat who’d nearly gotten her and half of the Few killed. 

Frank had made his decision. He’d chosen Corporal Carnegie, chosen to two-time them for the sake of a commission and a cushy desk job. He was dead to Charley, dead as a black hole, but Mary’s heart had passed their old friend’s event horizon long ago. Most of the time he managed to pretend that it didn’t make any difference.

“I really think it’s working, Charley,” Mary said. She was too practiced now to slur. “I really think we’re getting somewhere.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it, Mary,” Charley said. “As far as I can tell from here, there’s no real movement anymore. There’s just you and me and whatever’s left of the rest of us.”

“But that’s because you always stay here in the dark,” Mary said. “You should come with me, Charley. Get out in the stars again, start doing some real agitprop. It could be just like it was.”

“You know I can’t do that.” Not after Frank had revealed the face behind TAL, though the asshole hadn’t bothered to mention his own, far from insignificant contribution. The fact that he had, for whatever reason, decided not to give them Charley’s name as well… Charley didn’t know what to think of that, had never been able to understand it. He tried not to think about it.

“Just one little trip,” Mary said. “Come on, you know you want to.”

“Of course I want to! Do you think I like being stuck in this dump?” Charley took a deep breath, reminding himself that Mary was the last person to deserve his temper. “Look, I wish I could, but I can’t. I just - I can’t. There’s a bounty of fifty million on my head, and ten million just for info. I’d get you killed.”

“I can take care of myself you know. I’m the Few’s top agitator.” Charley felt his lungs constrict. In her drunken state, she had let herself go enough to actually sound proud. “I worry about you, Charley. You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Charley said. “I’ve got my work. I’ve got my spies. That’s enough.”

“You don’t even believe in the Few anymore.”

“I’ve grown up, Mary,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ll succeed, no. That doesn’t mean it’s not right.” Mary smiled softly, her eyes looking glassy and nostalgic and very far away.

“We Few,” she said softly, repeating the words of their initiation into the rebel group all those hectospans ago, “we happy Few.”

“We band of brothers,” said Charley.

* * *

“Why didn’t you release the stuff I gave you?” the young journalist demanded as he burst into the bar. Charley tensed, but thankfully there was no one else there. Just the cameras, and they didn’t have audio. He had made sure of that before he’d taken this job.

“Can we not do this here?”

“I told you they were - Did you even watch them?”

“Of course I did,” Charley said, “but this is not the place to talk about this, Mr…”

“ _ Officer _ Mark Cohen.”

“If you’re still clinging to your rank, then you really don’t have any business being here.”

“I’m not clinging to my rank.”

“I could have been a journalist like you,” Charley said. “I went to school for it, you know. I could have been a Federacy propagandist, probably one of the best. Instead I’m here.”

“The journalist bull is just a day job.” More like a way to avoid the heavy fines for vagrancy and unauthorized employment. “I went to film school because I wanted to do something important, something  _ real _ ...” He trailed off.

“And it turned out to be so much more real than you ever expected,” Charley finished.

“I didn’t want to film something like - like that.”

“You can say the word, you know,” Charley said.

“I wanted to make something beautiful, something that would bind the galaxy together. That was what I was working on before… But instead of binding the galaxy together, I filmed something that would rip it apart at the seams.”

“Genocide, it was genocide,” Charley said. “It was the wholesale slaughter of a planet that wouldn’t accept the Federacy’s interplanetary jackboot.” 

“It was horrible,” Mark said. “I had to do something, so I brought it to someone Roger told me could make something of it. But you didn’t. You just - You let them die on those datasticks.”

“There are bigger things going on here than your little crisis of conscience.” 

“Yeah, I got that,” Mark said resentfully. Charley’s hands fidgeted behind the bar as he tried to decide what to say, how much to say. “Thanks for nothing.”

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t do good,” he blurted out. Mark, who had looked ready to walk right back out into the gloom of Boheme Station, seemed to pause. Charley swayed on his heels, trying to find the words. “The things we rip at the seams can be sewn back together.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me?”

“It’s supposed to piss you off,” Charley said. This part was easy, the words written out by him a thousand times as TAL. “You can see all the ways that the Federacy’s a horrible fascist state. You can see how easily it could be fixed if everyone just agreed to stop being assholes. The only question now is whether you’re the kind of person to go back to your life, touched but unmoved, or whether you’re going to do something about it.” Mark was silent for a long moment.

“It would be dangerous,” he said. “I know what they do to traitors in the press corps. I’ve seen the executions.”

“So have I,” Charley said. “Hasn’t stopped me.”

“You want me to become some sort of spy.”

“Yes,” Charley said with complete honesty and not a hint of guilt at the task ahead for the younger man. “Yes, I am.” Mark took a hesitant step, and then he seemed to gain a sudden confidence, rushing forward to sit down at the bar across from Charley in one fluid movement.

“Martini,” he said. “Shaken, not stirred.”

* * *

Mark came to Charley every time, hand shaking as he turned over the datasticks that held the precious data. Charley watched the intel contained dispassionately every time, making notes on what was pertinent to the Few. He did not make notes as to how many innocents he saw murdered, how many homes leveled by bombs, how many children with their bodies burst open like overripe fruit by the microbeams of the Federacy.

He’d seen it all before,  _ lived  _ it all before and then some, and  _ he _ hadn’t had the lens of a camera between him and the atrocities. Sometimes he hated how old and tired he’d gotten.

Maybe that was why, when Mark offered, he didn't say no.

It wasn’t a betrayal of anything, not really. Mark was young, but he was old enough, old enough to have seen horrors and old enough to have chosen to do something about it. Mark was a spy, not some spacer or evacuee, and there was absolutely nothing preventing the both of them from having a little time to relax. They both knew what they were getting into.

Sometimes, afterwards, Mark tried to engage in pillowtalk. He didn’t speak about their work with the Few then, the only thing that an old propagandist and a young filmmaker could have in common. He talked about his art, about the film he still hoped to finish, about his bunkmate Roger’s attempts to write music before he was shipped out to possibly die. Charley rolled over and tried not to listen to him.

It sounded too much like before, with Frank. Back then they thought they could topple the Federacy with a song. Back then it was always Frank with music, Charley with words, the Few’s top propaganda agent TAL. After all that Frank and the Federacy had done, Charley had hoped he wouldn’t be so naive. 

That didn’t stop him from hoping that Mark could do the impossible.

* * *

“Just a single this time, Charley,” Mary said. “I have to be in tip-top shape.”

“Why would that be?” Charley said, dutifully pouring her scotch. Mary took a deep gulp.

“The Few want to make a push into the Central Systems,” she said, “and I’ve been tapped to lead the agitprop there.” Charley could have told her what she already knew, that the mission was a danger bordering on suicide. Charley could have begged her to stay. Charley could have told her that she was the last old friend he had and that he couldn’t fathom going on without her.

“I thought they were asking me for more material than usual,” Charley said instead.

* * *

Charley knew he was a little rougher than usual the next time Mark stayed on Boheme Station over the off-span, but Mark didn’t seem to mind at the time. He seemed… enthusiastic, in fact. Afterwards, though, he touched Charley’s shoulder tenderly and didn’t let him roll away from him.

“You seemed only half there tonight,” he said. 

“Don’t romanticize,” Charley said.

“You’re usually  _ there _ though, totally present. Where were you?” Charley didn’t answer. “You can trust me.”

“I know I can,” he said, and it was true. Mark was a spy, and he would have been able to turn Charley over to the Federacy in a second if he wanted to.

“But you can’t with this?”

“I’m sorry.” He could have used the Few as an excuse, and they wouldn’t have been half pleased if he  _ had  _ told Mark about their agitprop push, but instead he said, “It’s an old friend of mine. You understand?”

“I trusted you with Roger,” Mark says.

“Roger sounds like he’s neck-deep in resisting the Federacy, if not a member of the Few already. This is different.” He paused, and then he whispered, “This is deadly.”

“Can I help them?”

“There’s nothing that anyone can do,” Charley said. “It’s her choice, just like being a spy is yours.” 

“Oh,” said Mark, and then he didn’t ask anything more.

Charley almost wanted Mark to keep pushing. He almost wanted the younger man to force his walls down, decimate his hard-found acceptance of Mary’s decision, pillage his soul until he was the sort of person who would protest. Because Charley wasn’t that man, not anymore. There had been a time when his righteous fury had been ignited at the least injustice, from the carnage of a planetary invasion to the endangerment of one of his old friends for the good of the Few. But now there had been no fury, no resistance. Charley felt tired, right down to his soul, and he didn’t know what to do about it besides have sex.

It was just about the only thing he’d had some proper control over since the day he stepped on the Academy campus and met a beautiful man named Franklin Shepard.

* * *

Mary used one of the members of the Few to ferry a box of datasticks to him. It was full of the usual atrocities, mixed with some downloaded and smuggled schematics and troop locations that were far more intriguing than the usual fare. Most precious was the short holovid that Mary had recorded in a dirty motel room, looking more sober than she had in hectospans.

“I know I’ve said it before, so you have no reason to believe me,” she teased, “but I really do think we’re getting somewhere. Maybe not in our lifetimes, maybe not in our strictly theoretical children’s lifetimes, but we  _ are _ getting somewhere. It’s not so bad as to be hopeless.” 

Charley was so glad to hear from her that he couldn’t help sharing the news the next time Mark came around, but the younger man was looking unusually grim.

“They’ve moved up the shipping out date,” he said. “Roger doesn’t want to go, but he has to. He wasn’t lucky enough to make journalist or command track, and he’s too awful at math to be a scientist.”

“If he keeps his head down and follows orders, he has a good chance of making it out alive.”

“Do you think he doesn’t know that, that  _ I  _ don’t know that? It’s no use. Roger’s absolutely convinced that he’s going to die out there. Honestly, I don’t blame him. He’s not going to be good at shutting off his empathy and doing what they tell him is his duty.”

“Well, he’s going to have to try,” Charley said. Mark sighed, still horribly troubled, and fell into his arms. It was the only measure of comfort that Charley could give him.

* * *

Charley knew he was drinking too much again.

He had gone sober for two hectospans after Frank’s betrayal. He wasn’t like Mary; he couldn’t drink and get drunk and still do his job. It was too much of a risk, especially as half of TAL. The Few needed him at his best after everything had fallen apart.

He’d been slowly letting himself drink again. A glass of wine with dinner here, a beer to Mary’s double scotch there. He never let himself drink himself to sleep anymore, not when drinking himself to sleep could so easily become drinking himself to death. That fact was why he was able to so easily recognize that he was backsliding again.

The only question was whether he wanted to do anything about it this time.

Mary was gone. He was in a state of suspended animation when it came to her, waiting for the news that she had been caught or killed or executed and yet unwilling to give up the ghost. Mark came often, too often, and Charley was slowly coming to terms with the fact that he was going to have to push the younger man away if he wanted Mark to survive the next hectospan. 

His nightmares stayed the same. The atrocities on the datasticks never changed, and so his nightmares stayed the same.

“I think you need to go,” he said to Mark one evening after they had both collapsed in bed, sweat cooling.

“What?”

“I think you need to go.”

“But I always stay for a bispan.”

“I think you need to find someone else to pass your intel to.”

“Why?” Mark said. “I came to you, I was recruited by you. You’re the only one who understands what-”

“You need to know more members of the Few,” Charley interrupted. “You’re coming here too often. It’s dangerous for both of us.”

“Are you trying to break up with me?”

“There’s nothing to break up,” Charley said. “Besides, it’ll be safer for both of us.”

“Don’t I get any say in this?”

“As a matter of fact, you don’t,” Charley said as coldly as he could. “I’ll have someone from the Few contact you within the next two decaspans. For now, you should go.”

“No,” Mark said. “No, you can’t force me to go. This is bullshit.”

“I’m your superior, and I’m telling you that this is the way it will be from now on.”

“Now who’s clinging to his rank?”

“This is different. You agreed to be part of this, to spy for the Few, and that means that you do what I say.”

“And what about us? What about,” Mark gestured at the sweat-soaked sheets, “what about  _ this _ ?”

“This was a mistake, one that I should never have made.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

“I took on the risk of spying for you. I should be allowed to take this risk as well. I’m  _ willing _ to take this risk as well.”

“But I’m not,” Charley almost shouted. Mark flinched, and Charley felt horribly, immeasurably guilty. It didn’t change a thing.

“You’re a coward,” Mark said, voice acidic in spite of its slight tremble.

“Maybe I am,” Charley said, unable to meet Mark’s eyes. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll suddenly change my mind.”

“Fine,” Mark snapped, gathering up his discarded clothing. “ _ Fine _ . Have fun on Boheme, with your nighttime and your bar and your stupid,  _ stupid  _ job. The rest of us could get on fine without you,  _ TAL _ .” He stormed out, not even bothering to do more than pull his trousers back on.

Charley collapsed on the bed. It still smelled like Mark, Mark’s cologne and musk and sweat. The worst part was that Charley couldn’t even defend himself. Mark hadn’t said anything that wasn’t completely true.

* * *

Charley was given an envelope containing one datastick by an anonymous member of the Few. It was the tenth span, the one time when the stars were drowned out by the sun that had supposed to belong to Boheme Station. Normally Charley would have welcomed the sun, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to watch this datastick in the light of day, especially not after reading the note that had been delivered with it.

_ Charley,  _ (the note read) 

_ I’m sorry that I didn’t deliver this datastick to you myself. To be fair, you did tell me to go, and you implied that it was forever. I don’t think you’ll be any more inclined to allow me into your life after seeing what’s in the footage I took, but a boy can dream, right? _

_ I love you. _

_ Mark _

Charley stuck the datastick in his digipad. He squinted a little at the hologram as it popped up, struggling with the sunlight that streamed through the window. When he recognized the figures there, he bit his bottom lip. He would do his duty, he decided. He would watch this as dispassionately as he had watched so many others.

* * *

“You have been found guilty of sabotage, incitement of terrorism, the spread of unauthorized materials, and high treason by the Court Judiciary. Therefore, by the order of the High Council, you, Mary Flynn, will be executed by microbeam on this day, the twenty-first span of the five thousand two hundred thirty fifth hectospan of the Universal Federacy. What do you choose as your last words?”

“Just two sentences. Sorry, Charley, and fuck you, Frank.”

_ (Mary looked completely sober, furious, alive. Charley had never been more proud of her.) _

“Very well. As the appointed executioner of the glorious Universal Federacy, I, Admiral Franklin Shepard, will thereby-”

“We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship to die with us.”

“ _ Thereby- _ ”

“This day is called the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours and say ‘Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.’”

“Shut her up!”

“Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, and say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin's day-”

_ (Charley winced when Frank slapped Mary as though they had never loved each other, as though there had never been anything that would have prevented this.) _

“And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered! We few, we happy few-”

_ (The bolt of the microbeam hit Mary point blank in the face. First her face, then the rest of her split open like an overripe fruit, her torso exploded down the middle until her shoulders touched behind her, her ribs pulled apart and lolling open as though to receive some precious gift. Frank stepped back from her, his face and uniform splattered in his old friend’s blood, a look of faint disgust on his face but nothing more. _

_ “We band of brothers,” Charlie said, finishing the phrase for her one last time.) _

* * *

Charley continued on as he always had. He watched the datasticks dispassionately, taking his notes and doing his duty. He wrote the Few’s propaganda for them, staving off despair with drink as the requests trickled down into nothingness. He imagined a world where he had let Mark stay in his bed for one more span, where Mark was the one who had been blasted into bits of meat by Frank’s microbeam. He let himself fade into the fabric of Boheme Station, just another cast-off in its eternal night.

Eventually, he knew, even he in his relative safety would be caught, and a not insignificant part of him welcomed that span. He no longer looked forward to the sunlight. He couldn’t even stand the stars. 


End file.
